Speech Language Pathologist Salary 2026
SLPs earn a median of $97,870 (BLS, May 2025), from $62,900 to $134,160. Schools pay $20,610 less than hospitals, and employ more SLPs than anywhere else.
Speech Language Pathologist Salary: The Setting Decides
Median pay in speech language pathology is $97,870, or $47.05 hourly, per the BLS release for May 2025. With all US occupations sitting at $50,980, the profession runs 92 percent ahead.
Where you work moves that figure by more than $20,000, and most of the profession works in the setting that pays least. That is the useful part of this page.
The Full Range
- Bottom 10 percent
- Under $62,900
- Clinical fellowship year, school contracts
- 25th percentile
- $77,730
- Early career, school based
- Median
- $97,870
- The speech pathologist salary most quoted
- 75th percentile
- $114,570
- Medical settings, experience, expensive states
- Top 10 percent
- Over $134,160
- Acute care, private practice, contract work
Salary for SLP, speech pathologist salary and speech therapist salary all describe this occupation. Speech therapist wage is a second naming convention that persists, particularly outside medical settings, and BLS counts the two as one group under speech language pathologists.
The profession employed 193,400 people in 2025 and BLS projects 17 percent growth through 2035. That is the fastest of any role we staff.
Setting
Schools Pay the Least and Employ the Most
- Hospitals
- $103,690
- Highest of the main settings. Acute, dysphagia heavy
- Therapy practices
- $98,910
- Offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists
- Elementary and secondary schools
- $83,080
- The single largest employer of SLPs
- The gap
- $20,610
- Between schools and hospitals
That $20,610 separates the setting employing the most speech language pathologists from the one paying best. It is the widest setting gap on any pay page we have built, wider even than the home health to outpatient spread in physical therapy.
Part of the explanation is the calendar. School contracts commonly run nine or ten months rather than twelve, so an annual comparison against a hospital salary is not comparing like with like. Divide a school figure by the months actually worked before you conclude anything from it.
The rest is simply that districts set pay on scales built for teachers, and clinical specialism does not move those scales the way it moves a hospital grade.
Starting Out and the Fellowship Year
New SLPs land between the bottom tenth and the 25th percentile. In practice a speech pathologist starting salary of roughly $62,900 to $77,730. The clinical fellowship year occupies the lower part of that band, since it is a supervised post rather than an independent one.
What happens after the fellowship matters more than where it happens. A fellowship completed in a medical setting opens hospital and skilled nursing posts that a school based one does not, and those are the settings at the top of the range.
Pediatric and Medical SLP Pay
Pediatric speech language pathologist salary and medical SLP salary are the two specialty questions asked most, and BLS answers neither directly. It reports speech language pathologists as one occupation, so any precise figure for either is estimated rather than published.
Setting data answers the question anyway. Pediatric practice clusters in schools and early intervention, at the bottom of the pay range. Medical SLP work clusters in hospitals and skilled nursing, at the top. Those are the two ends of the $20,610 spread already described, approached from a different direction.
School based therapists compare the two professions for exactly this reason — occupational therapist pay carries the same academic-year compression on a $100,330 median.
Dysphagia competence is what moves a medical SLP into the upper quartile. Swallowing work is the part of the job hospitals struggle most to cover, and it is not something a school based career builds.
How Contract Rates Are Put Together
Contract pricing follows its own logic. The weekly figure holds an hourly rate the tax system treats as income, plus stipends for housing and meals it does not, conditional on a genuine home existing elsewhere.
One complication hits this profession harder than its neighbours. Districts frequently write contracts per day or per academic term, and setting a daily school rate beside an hourly clinical rate without adjusting for the calendar will mislead you every time.
Establish the hourly equivalent first. Then compare.
See what a contract would pay
Tell us your settings, your state licenses and whether dysphagia work interests you. A real figure comes back.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do speech language pathologists make?
Speech language pathologists recorded a $97,870 median for May 2025 on BLS data, which is $47.05 an hour. A tenth of the profession earns below $62,900 and a tenth above $134,160. Measured against the $50,980 covering all US occupations, the premium is 92 percent.
Do school SLPs earn less than hospital SLPs?
School based speech language pathologists earn about $20,610 less a year than hospital based ones, on BLS May 2025 medians of $83,080 against $103,690. The academic calendar explains part of that, since a district contract is normally shorter than a full working year.
Why do published SLP figures differ so much?
Published speech pathologist salary figures vary mainly because of survey year. The $95,410 figure still appearing on live pages is from May 2024, and older numbers such as $89,290 and $84,140 are circulating too. BLS published $97,870 for May 2025.
Is speech language pathology a growing profession?
Speech language pathology is projected to grow 17 percent through 2035, the fastest rate of any profession we staff, from a base of 193,400 jobs. BLS classes that as much faster than average. An aging population and earlier identification of childhood speech disorders drive most of it.
Data on this page: BLS SOC 29-1127, May 2025, from OEWS and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Linked throughout. Last reviewed October 2026.